Kevin's and The Lottery in North Bennington, VT

Our first selection on our hamburger quest was Kevin's in North Bennington. The astute reader will puzzle him/herself regarding the lateness of our review, but it is due merely to the dull acumen of this author, who found himself pondering inexplicably on how precisely to frame the critique so as to best prepare new patrons of that establishment for what we found to be a superior dining experience (regarding hamburgers only, it needs to be noted, as we did not sample other delicacies, such as the odd fritatta or burrito--very odd indeed since Kevin's does not serve Mexican dishes to my knowledge, anyway).

After visiting Kevin's, we thought our quest a very short one, indeed. Kevin's, as I have noted before, was our first stop and we thought it so superior, of such high quality, that we questioned whether we could ever find another tavern to surpass it. (The loyal follower of this blog will have noted by now that we did indeed find another eatery that even surpassed Kevin's.)

Appended below, you will find our ratings. Kevin's achieved a very respectable 104.5 score, with both our burgers showing a high-caliber juiciness, taste and size (we gave Kevin's a nine on the size meter--it would have achieved a perfect ten but since this was our first stop on the quest we thought it best to give some room for a perfectibility that we in fact never saw surpassed). This reviewer has remarked that Kevin's locale is the same as in the famous short story by Shirley Jackson (who lived in North Bennington), The Lottery, which he assumes the reader is familiar with. Hopes, at any rate. The full story is found below the ratings queue below.

Juiciness		10
Size Matters		9
Sides		9
Price		9
Char-ability		8
Meat Type		8
Hand-ability		9
As Ordered*		10
Server Issues		9
Taste		9.5
Ambiance**		8
Parking Lot***		6
		104.5

The Lottery @Kevin’s in No. Bennington, VT

The evening of April 27th was clear and moonlit, with the fresh coolness of a full-spring day; the flowers

were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green. That is, they would be if it were but a month from now. Today’s blooms were still dozing in this half-frozen Vermont landscape. The villagers had been gathering for some time now around the village square, large piles of what appeared to be stones had been built up into little mountains by the boys nearby Kevins, a small pub and restaurant right on the main street.

Companion and I had set out for this establishment on hearing of its excellent fare and thinking we might settle for a burger and fries --as they had an excellent reputation for same-- we worked our way in through the crowd which seemed to have its epicenter on the eatery. The people seemed quite pleasant and asked if we were here especially for the lottery. “No, not at all. Just the burgers.” They laughed and let us know that some others had beaten us to it. A man, introduced to us as Old Man Warner, shook his head sadly, muttering only that things twernt what they used to be.

A few boys ran through, jostling as they went, and the bar keep, a Mr Dickie Delacroix, yelled after them to behave as better befits a sacred holiday such as it was--”and put those down!” He yelled, as the boys were seen stuffing their pockets from the corner pile.

It looked like we had a long wait, but two gentlemen--Steve Adams and Mr Graves--rose suddenly from their seats proffering to us their roosting place. “You new to town? Not for the Lottery?” Mr Graves wanted to know. Companion said that the only lottery he was after was to pick the best burger in the tri-state area. This received a smirk from Mr Adams, and a guffaw from Mr Graves, who moved on over to the mountain in the corner, which grew ever higher as we sat waiting for the table to be cleared and our order--already on our minds-- taken.

We didn’t have to wait overlong, as our waitress, a middle-aged woman with rosy cheeks, came and settled the area and began to orate on the specials for the evening. “Tut, tut,” companion let fly, “we have decided on the order; indeed we had decided weeks ago!” And with that we summarized our plan for discovering the greatest example of a burger anywhere (within the tri-state area, that is) . “Well, if my name ain’t Tessie Hutchinson! Hey, Dickie! These gents are here to review your burgers!”

After that we were transformed into minor celebrities. Numerous folk rose to greet us and shake our hands. Mr Summers, Bobby Martin, and Henry Jones, and his brother Bobby, all came up and made us feel quite at home. “Here for the Lottery?” they all seemed to want to know. “ “Just the burgers,” companion let on. And another laugh. Old Man Warner, who appeared to be as old as the ramshackle black antique box sitting on the bar, again could be heard to mutter, “Pack of crazy fools--I hear up north they be thinking of giving up the lottery. Ain’t what it used to be, sure to tell.”

Kevin’s was a small establishment, divided into a pub on the north side and an eatery on the south. We had seated ourselves in the area of liquid refreshments as they had several closely arranged tables there for pub fare. All total, restaurant, pub and kitchen, were not as long as a stone’s throw from end to end.

But as companion and myself have often found out, closeness within an eating house often brings surprisingly positive results in terms of flavorful concoctions as well as seasoned friendships. Here we had been bombarded with handshakes and hello’s and how-are-you’s. The place was a welcoming one, and the people seemed a  gregarious and affectionate sort.

Tessie soon brought out our burgers, large whelps of meat, heaped high as boulders! And lying next to them heaved a bed of fries that seemed more numerous than the gravel on the drive outside. Companion and I reached for the catsup at the same time and as we did so simultaneously squirted such a fountain of tomato-y goodness that it splattered all over and down our plates to the fries below. Ah, goodness!

The burger fit the reputation of the place, a rock-solid emblem of flavorful character that mirrored the villagers in their own standing in the town as men and women ranking high in station, honor, and rectitude.

After we smoothed down our hair and faces, now a bit tussled with burger-juice and catsup, looking as if we had been in a fight from dawn to dusk, we finished our meal in near silence, enjoying every bite, hardly pausing to comment on its savory goodness. And just as Tessie had delivered to us our bill, Mr Summers, in front of the bar, raised himself high on a three-legged stool and picking up the old black box, paused to show it to everyone’s satisfaction.

“Now, you know what this day means. Guess we better get started, get this over with, so's we can go

back to work. Anybody ain't here?" No one said anything, so he began the process, pulling slips--they appeared to be duplicate bills of fare from the day’s business--and read the names off methodically, one by one.

"Allen." Mr. Summers said. "Anderson.... Bentham."

He moved on through the alphabet until he came to the middle, as he paused rather dramatically. He turned the slip over showing a dark grease spot. “I can’t read this name,” he shouted. Tessie came over and read it to him, then turning in our direction, she then whispered into his ear.

Mr Summers stepped down off the stool and walked over to our table. “What is your name, sir?” he inquired, rather ceremoniously I thought for we had been introduced not long before. “All right, fellows.” Then he again lifted the bill high over everyone’s heads in order for them to better inspect the ticket.

“Who’s got it? Who is it?” we could hear people whispering throughout the crowd. “Is it Tessie? Did Bobby Martin get it?”

“All right, folks,” Mr Summers said. “Let’s finish quickly. Night’s almost here.”

The villagers made for the pile that had grown so high in the corner. After a bit, companion and I were in the center of a circle of townsfolk holding those stone-like objects. If we hadn’t been weighed down by the recent meal we might have high-tailed it out of there for such was the look of terror on the faces of those surrounding us.

But what we had taken as terror was in fact a look of some grudging resentment toward us, for we had apparently stumbled on a windfall of an entire year’s worth of burger and fries--or at least I had, for companion hadn’t paid a tuppence on the bill and so wasn’t even in the drawing. But the look of jealousy quickly gave way to acceptance as the townsfolk gnawed on the “stones” (which were in fact chocolate chip cookies as tender and moist as any I have ever sampled--do I need to openly declare the thoughts that had recently run through my brain?) with a wave of delicious satisfaction coming over each and every one of them--myself included as I raced to pocket a dozen or more.

You could have knocked me down with a feather.

Foggy Notion, or The Life and Notable Adventure of our Knight-errant in New York.

[Foggy Notions, otherwise known as The Bog, has become our current leader on the burger meter, scoring an impressive 112 points (out of a possible 120). Leading the way were perfect scores in Juiciness, Sides, Meat Type, Handability, As Ordered, and Taste. We were going to give it a 9 for taste, just to give room for improvability, but that seemed such a remote possibility we are going to allow for the ten. As for Sides, companion had fries which were crisp, though companion did allow for some room for even more crispiness, and my own selection of onion rings were perfection, even allowing for the possibility that there could have been a larger quantity. I suppose one could always have more of a good thing, especially with companion's constant pilfering.]

...and now for our more detailed review: readers take note that this pushes the envelope.

Foggy Notion, or The Life and Notable Adventure of our Knight-errant in New York.

In a certain corner of New York, the exact name of which I choose not to recall--but oh yes, in Cambridge, NY, a city whose stature, if it were a person, would stand less than the average height of a green grocer, not that a grocer is necessarily short in stature but certainly, at least in this authors experience, less than that of a tavern owner--there came one evening, for the sun had dipped below the horizon some minutes before, a man of some ingenuity, if by ingenuity one means distracted to the point of lunacy.

It was this man that accompanied me--truly he bade me follow as a squire follows his knight, fully laboring under the weight of spare armor and carrying the saddlebags of sustenance that are necessary on trips far and wide, which knights are generally supposed to perform.

It was after many years of acquaintance with this personage, a man I would dub tranquil and sedate at most times (troublesome at his worst but that was seldom) and a man of some entertainment, not to be undervalued in that quarter, that I became most accustomed to his sometime variant tactics, for he would at times jump up off his seat to further some adventure. This normally would be an imagined jousting or swordplay; often it would be merely acting as governor of some island kingdom. And so, when he took me under his wing on this particular evening, it was not so unusual that I was led to believe that anything untoward would effect itself.

Now in this particular corner of the world there are sometimes occasion to fortify oneself in any of several inns that pockmark these tracts of lands, farmlands mostly, though a stone’s throw from any place you might find yourself standing will hit the broadside of some enterprising sort. Such is the picture of this occupied territory, energetic...yet not overly so.

My friend, after a days labor which left him huffing and puffing so that I thought he might have been taken hold of the consumption--or at least a very common cold--and after I had harangued for quite a long time concerning the unavailability of such foodstuffs that might be called sustaining and fortifying, I say my friend agreed that he too was in such a state of hunger that he might faint dead away if there were not found some ready nourishment at hand.

Just as my friend made use of these words, garbled though they were by much weakness occasioned by his famished state, he and I heard the cry of a thousand giants, or at least that was the thought which occurred within my friend’s addled brain. I do allow that the sound was quite deafening, a full-mouthed roar that Jove himself may have unleashed upon some poor shepherd in an Athenian meadow. But turning my head I spied what indeed was only just nearby, twelve or so bikers wearing skullcaps and black leather suits, and loudly accelerating their motors so that if it had thundered directly above our heads we would not have been made aware of it.

Still, fortune smiled upon us, for the bikes had been driven into the lot of a nearby inn, of the name Foggy Notions. At least to me it seemed an inn, a place of burgers and fries and ale, since within the windows I could see the lights advertising such fare.

Alas, to my friend’s addled mind the establishment was seen as a castle, and the bikers were but knights charging within. He made some mention of siege warfare and waiting thirty days or so till the castle surrenders itself, but as I made plain to him, we did not have one day to wait, much less thirty.

He agreed to charge the castle and take it, making use of my own strong right arm, of course, as well as his; and any and all within would soon be his prisoner. I averred that there still might be found a burger within, if we hurried.

And hurry we did. At the entrance, we were greeted by a maid (my friend thought her a maid, though I tended to the opinion that she was more likely someone’s grandmother) who thankfully did not seem to pay any attention to my friend’s protestations and accusations. When he stated--and quite forthrightly so I must say--that any and all within this castle (for such he still believed despite the barman’s presence and the families taking their leave of dinner, and the several televisions showing what must have been the latest Yankees vs Red Sox encounter), that any and all would be his very own vassals, she merely nodded, saying to him, “I’m thinkin’ I’ll have some of what he just had.”

Though I expected my friend to be joyous at his apparent victory, and the taking of a castle with nary a bruise or scratch, much less the severing of one’s more delicate parts which anyone will tell you is quite possible when attacking castles, is quite a good and fortunate thing. But though Lady Fortune seemed to smile brightly on my friend, he took a deep long sigh and seemed as doleful a knight as any that anyone might have imagined at that particular instant.

“I know what will cheer you up,” I said. “A burger and fries!”

“And ale?”

“And ale as well, of course!”

And our maid, or grandmother, as the case may be, soon brought our order to us, and not a moment too soon, as the Knight of the Doleful Countenance (as so I re-named him) was just about to attack the television set which he mistook for the one eye’d relative of Cyclops.

The burger seemed a potion of the order of the Balsam of Fierbras, which my knight friend explained could cure a man even after being cut in half on the battlefield, as long as the nurse was of sufficient beauty and continually said the Pater Noster while performing her necessary duties as nurse and surgeon. For he quite perked up and I thought even began to make some sense of the place when he looked up, finished chewing his burger, and stated quite emphatically, “I say, this is the best burger I have ever eaten and if that isn’t true then I am not the bravest knight in Christendom!”

I did heartily agree, for my own burger had found its way into my stomach so fast that one might have thought chewing to be optional. And the fries were, it should be noted, quite equal to the burger: crispy and cradled in oil--not overmuch--and salted just so that it made one wish for another ale...and there! One readily appeared.

Our blessing should have ended there, with a successful battle and castle taken, and a grandmother rescued to boot, as well a meal to match, but for another bout of madness on the part of my friend, who immediately after quaffing his drink, took umbrage at some leather-cropped biker making unchivalrous comments at the baseball game, which my friend again insisted was Cyclops’ brother-in-law.

I will not make a longer story out of one that already seems an epic even not including the details of the scuffle which ensued...other than to say that there were so many punches thrown (though seldom landed) that even I in my saner moments thought that perhaps Cyclops himself had found his way to come to the aid of his long-lost family member. Tables were tossed, and the air held such a quantity of dust and debris that I thought it opportune to hightail it out of there, and dragging my friend to his feet we somehow did manage to escape. But the Knight of the Doleful Countenance could not just leave the way he had come. A knight, after storming a castle, apparently leaves with some amount of booty, at least a horse that might match his own grace and stalwartness. And that is how we found ourselves riding off, he on a black steed, whose braided mane was whipped by the wind, and myself, riding a rather pink-ish bike that must have been that of a lady friend of the gentleman our good knight had punched in the face just as we made our exit.

But no matter. We had found our adventure, as well some awfully good burgers and fries. And as my faith abounds in the security that nature’s changing course affirms constancy in shifting sands, and that knights of doleful countenance must by now represent  some ill-bade fortune indeed, I can assert that though things be high or low, reasonable or foggy,  a good burger can make a bad day much better.

Juiciness	10
Size Matters	10
Sides	8
Price	9
Char-ability	9
Meat Type	10
Hand-ability	10
As Ordered*	10
Server Issues	8
Taste	10
Ambiance**	9
Parking Lot***	9